A reflection on Metropolis

Fritz Lang was a Futurist by default, as was his wife, Thea von Harbou, and by default, fascists, but Lang "rehabilitated" himself in the end, while Von Harbou died of shame like a lot of Germans in the aftermath of WWII...

A.J. Weberman on Ron Paul

Ed.--This is a pretty good set of personal observations by a Jewish activist on Ron Paul and the people he surrounds himself with. I too stumbled upon Spotlight (a defunct anti-Semitic/right wing extremist paper), speaking for myself in the early 90s, and agree with his conclusion: Ron Paul is an authoritarian fascist and a race baiter, a demagogue, a liar. Paul is a sad reminder of the failings of American Populism just over a century ago too, the fixation on the gold standard-and-all...as well as the baggage of anti-Semitism.

Make no mistake: This man, and more specifically, the people who are his base, are an incredibly dangerous political phenomenon on the American landscape. Worst of all are his Christian Identity connections. His son Rand (named after Ayn Rand) has been put on the SPLC's watch list not long ago, and for good reason. These people are scarier than you think. The scariest part is that there are numbskulls on the left (really arch-conservative flakes) who are being swayed by him out of desperation and a desire for expediency, for immediate change. Yeah, we'd get change alright--an even greater acceleration of the move towards corporate tyranny and a more openly racialist state.

"Ron Paul - The Most Dangerous Nazi in America": http://www.slideshare.net/AJWeberman/ron-paul-the-most-dangerous-nazi-in-america?from=new_upload_email

Postscript: Again, I don't agree with all of Weberman's contentions, historical or otherwise, but the raw data is there. I do agree that Paul is a demagogue, a Christian Identity freak and a corporatist, a bad populist.

Jewish Republican Eric Cantor sings for his meals

This smarmy fascist asshole was on the CBS investigative program 60 Minutes last night denying before God and everybody that Ronald Reagan never raised taxes when it's well established that he did. Is Cantor hanging out with Holocaust denier David Irving as well? Is he totally insane or just a bad liar? I'll tell you what he and most politicians are: simulacra of human beings, parodies of people. Politicians having sex with prostitutes is one more indicator that these people aren't human, acting out perverse, parallel versions of the lives of normal, well-balanced, ordinary people. The fact is that they're pathological, totally insane, and should be detained and evaluated as to whether they're criminal psychotics by legal and clinical definition.

Republican Eric Cantor needs to reform the Sonderkommando (Jews in the death camps who assisted in the disposal of other inmates for a little more time) so he can join it. Will he shoot himself in the back of the head, then dump his own body into a mass grave? Could be. His Walther P-38 is loaded with a full clip, he's ready for action, ready to lick the hand that overfeeds him with inflated capital. What scum. What an animal. Dirt. Typical behavior of Republicans in every sense. Next week they're going to tell us that the laws of gravity have been rescinded.

On Ron Paul and his Trolls

He's a racist, but in the interest of brevity, ala Seuss, a few lines (no, not drugs):

I will not vote for him in a booth, I will not say he's long in the tooth. I will not say that he is sane, or that he is a weather vane. I say that he is a kook, and that he thinks that blacks are "spooks." He will not win on election day, so there is nothing more to say about this ossified ofay.

And since he's bound to lose, there truly is no more to say.

On the Wikileaks State Dept. cable controversy

WWW--Make no mistake: The leaking of the State Department cables is--far-and-away--bigger than the release of the Pentagon Papers. Even that scandal's whistle-blower, Daniel Ellsberg, is giving this one a thumb's-up, and so am I and millions. Could we be wrong? I don't think so at all.

I wholeheartedly support their release because crimes are routinely committed in the name of the American public. This is about institutionalized corruption being hidden from the public and the world; the victims of American foreign policy are the first to know, the American public, the last, and for good reason. That's a systematic abuse of power and calls for things like this release to happen just as systematically if we wish to live in a free and open society. Such releases are the best defense we can possibly have since these clowns are risking our lives every single day in the service of anarchic and unregulated power.

These people in the State Department and the national security state are going to get us all killed if we're not careful; they're the great terrorists of our common era.

This last week has brought numerous attacks on Wikileaks, and coming from all kinds of nefarious corners, across the globe. It's coming from an international, criminal power structure that's bent on total domination of the rest of us, the salt of the earth, the average man and woman, everyone outside of the corridors of power. This is, in the words and observations of many of us on the true left in America, the first major information war, a war with incredible stakes: The survival of human civilization and possibly the species itself, not merely the freedom of the average man and woman.

Make no mistake that the mask is off and that this is a global phenomena. It's not just America's mask being ripped-off. Predictably, the shills and lackeys are coming out of the woodwork and exposing themselves to patch things and instate damage control. Amazon.com, Ebay/Paypal, Time Magazine, CBS, CNN, and much of the rest of the American mainstream media as well as corporations are running into the fray. The walls of their Castle system are quaking right now and it's time to take notes on who's part of the problem. It's now obvious who they are.

A national security issue? It is, just not the way it's being presented. We, the people of the world, have a right to know these things--we must know them for our own safety and the preservation of human rights and democracy itself, now under incredible and sustained attack. The stakes couldn't be any higher. Many Internet providers like Amazon are cutting the lines that feed Wikileaks into the United States.

This is mainly to keep the American public where it's usually at: In the dark, the last to know what is being done in their name, and what is being done is systematic crime, make no mistake about it. This is crucial for unaccountable power to succeed, which could mean the end of us all.

Links to Wikileaks mirrors and foreign-subsidiaries: http://czardonic.wordpress.com/

Songs from the Site Meter: The return of the turds from SAIC II

Site Meter--"But Matt, why do you hate A'murka, why don't you want to play nice with these defense/intelligence contractors?" Because we don't need them and they're draining our economy and eroding our rights? Two visits, short, routine. But it's to illustrate that, yes, they do care what we the people think. They should, we're pissed.

Domain Name		saic.com ? (Commercial)
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And...

Domain Name		saic.com ? (Commercial)
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And Qualcomm came by for Jeffrey A. Taylor and to say "hi" (hit labels for more background):

Domain Name		(Unknown)
IP Address		65.214.169.# (Qualcomm)
ISP		Verizon Business
Location		Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : California City : San Diego Lat/Long : 32.7191, -117.1607 (Map)
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"Manners" and democracy

WWW--Manners are for a police state, not a democracy. But it's good to stay well-manicured, yes. How about growing a pair and finally growing-up?


Postscript, 08.06.2009: "Unity" is for totalitarian societies. Those who yearn for this are of a similar mindset to those people who want to march-in-line. Democracy is contentious and bitter with plenty of flinging-of-bile. There will be no great moment of unity beyond the shared expression that we all want liberty and that we all yearn for freedom. There's your real "unity," but it doesn't mean things are suddenly going to nice and neat. Democracy means getting in their and arguing, disagreeing. If you don't get that, you don't understand democracy and are probably authoritarian-minded, which is un-American.

Jaenelle Antas: The StormFront photos (nifty white hate cheesecake!)

Ed.--I captured these photos from StormFront posting from Jaenelle Antas's account ("Tristania," allegedly taken from a very bad Norwegian metal opera band's name), I doubt they'll stay up for much longer, but who knows? After all, she's pretty shameless about her stupidity as must idiots are. Frequently, when you want to attract foolish young men to hate movements, you use a little honey, countercultural and anti-establishment posturings, and a good dose of deception.

As a matter of obvious fact, deception is what Antas appears to be all about: she was a Libertarian, but not a Libertarian; she wasn't a white hate activist, but she is one, and so on. The real question here is whether the Indiana Libertarian Party knew she was what she in fact was and is: an ally of neo-Nazis internationally, a kind of adjutant of Holocaust denier and Mosleyite-styled figure David Irving, and probably someone the Indiana Libertarians wouldn't notice since they're far right wackos themselves. Not all of them are openly-racist, but many of their social postions could easily lead to inflaming racial tensions, and their connections to the miltia movement through people like Lew Rockwell are telling.

So, if you have a crappy ideology that the public would never buy in a million years unless they were independently wealthy, nuts, or both, you have to sugar-coat it with appeals through the tired iconography of rebellion, wrapped-in various cultural forms like music, flags, empty rhetoric, highly charged-imagery, and sex-appeal.

This all reminds me of the fallacy of an old countercultural conceit that was always wrong: "If so-and-so likes the same music as I do, they must be cool." Utter crap. Her tastes in music are an oxymoron, she has poor taste, if any, and I'm leaving-out Beethoven and Bach, everyone with a working brain-stem likes that shit.

Antas has confirmed that she's "Tristania," so there you have it, corroboration. By the way: it doesn't matter whether she's a fan of Richard Wagner or not, she's still directly or indirectly influenced by him, that's how culture works, often invisibly.

Welcome to public life, kiddo, I sure hope your parents didn't teach to think and act this way.

Bach in Black

Postscript: I showed these photos to my 65-year-old mother who immediately stated, "She looks like a hooker." Indeed, circa 1933...


Postscript, June 29, 2013: You can find a few of the photos that were removed here, from a simple Google search:  https://www.google.com/#output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=Jaenelle+Antas&oq=Jaenelle+Antas&gs_l=hp.3...13075.18449.0.19120.14.10.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0...1c.1.18.psy-ab.fp3RncHNloI&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.48572450,d.cGE&fp=7281391dcddcbf5d&biw=1366&bih=648

A.J. Weberman's Homothug (2008) review

“My books are worth more unsigned.”

--A.J. Weberman to the author, 2009.

In the hot summer of 1991, and in the midst of an unprecedented crime wave, there was a pogrom in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn that has been called “one of the most serious incidents of anti-Semitism in American history.”[i] The pogrom was over an accidental hit-and-run of a black child named Gavin Cato by members of the Lubavitch Community. Within this racially-charged environment, a Hasidic Jew named Yankel Rosenbaum was murdered by a mob of African-American vigilantes spouting anti-Semitic epithets at the victim. This crime--and countless other events in the city at the time--ignited widespread calls for a law and order agenda from City Hall. 

The rioting took place under the administration of African-American mayor David Dinkins who ran on the race card in NYC’s 1989 mayoral elections, and appearances are everything in American politics. 

According to New York State’s Girgenti Report, Mayor Dinkins allowed the riots in Crown Heights to rage for three long days before doing much of anything about it, and his poor record in curbing crime created a backlash that grew over time. Things hadn’t gotten much better by the next election cycle when Dinkins ran against the Republican Rudolph Giuliani, and the perception was that Dinkins was “soft on crime.” At that time the Republican candidate was known for his record as an aggressive prosecuting U.S. Attorney in the Southern District (NYC region)—if he was known for anything at all. But did New Yorkers really know who—or perhaps what--they were voting for in 1993?

Did Rudy play to the outrage? You bet.

Political biographies are a minefield for any author, and especially when the subject is alive-and-kicking, and kicking his perceived enemies is exactly what Rudy Giuliani does best. As a matter of fact, sometimes it appears that it’s all that he does once in office--besides filling key governmental positions with his criminal cronies. First released in May 2008 on Amazon.com, Weberman’s profile of the former mayor of New York City was abruptly pulled by the online seller (who also printed the book through BookSurge) without much explanation, though it can be assumed there were threats regarding defamation of character. That’s rich considering the subject and the people he’s surrounding himself with over the years. According to Weberman, Giuliani’s own attorneys directed legal threats at Amazon.com, causing the removal of the book (still available @ http://yippiemuseum.org/homothug/ ) .

Was it Giuliani? Weberman appears to believe so.

There don’t appear to be any indications otherwise, but there are a few other characters in the narrative besides Giuliani who might have wanted the book pulled like the “defrocked” Monsignor, Alan J. Placa, an individual with a most peculiar attitude towards pedophilia and its relation to society and the law, and there are others who might have wanted the same. Placa handled charges of pedophilia against the Church on Long Island for several years, and doesn’t have a stellar reputation. Nevertheless, it’s safe to assume that Placa and Giuliani are still close friends and associates, if not two men who are stuck with each other thanks to mutual blackmail of some kind. According to Weberman and others, this is probably because Giuliani and Placa have had sexual relations with one another at some point during their youth, and therefore, they share secrets that are a threat to their power. Placa’s powerful? It helps to have powerful friends…

The author quotes Placa himself about his attitudes towards pedophile priests, and they’re not mainstream ones (the emphasis in the quote is Weberman’s):

“In my own experience, attempts to reintegrate people into the ministry have been quite successful. I have never been involved in attempting to reintegrate a clinically diagnosed fixated pedophile [MJ: he’s being very careful in his wording here] into the ministry, however, similarly, I have never been involved in attempting to reintegrate a person into the ministry after that person has been convicted of a criminal offense and has served time in prison. Such a move would be inappropriate, at the very least, for ‘public-relations’ reasons [MJ: the only real time the Church is concerned], if not also for clinical, legal, and moral reasons. With these provisos in mind, I report that my own experience (in many cases over the last six years) leads me to believe that most people who have engaged in the sort of inappropriate behavior we are describing here can successfully be reintegrated into some useful and fulfilling Church ministry…” [ii]

Yet, as Weberman points-out, and as anyone with any sense knows, you cannot reform a pedophile, making Placa’s written statements not only disingenuous, but bald lies that one would expect to come from a pedophile. For this reason and many others laid-out in the text, Placa has a very important place in Giuliani’s life and in the development of his character and his behavior. The author treats the other players in similar fashion since this is a study of a man’s character and how he came to have it. Assuming that Giuliani has character might be taking a wild leap of logic. 

Logically, Weberman also delves a little into the effects of heredity on sexual tendencies as well as the general effects of environment on Giuliani. Rudy’s father Harold was a convicted exhibitionist, a violent malcontent who consorted with other street criminals, and was a low-level organized crime soldier. What went on in the Giuliani home in front of little Rudy? We’re not entirely sure, but if you grow-up in a milieu of sexual depravity, violence, and organized crime, there’s a good chance you’re going to act in similar fashion later on. It appears that this has been the case throughout Rudolph Giuliani’s sordid adult life.

Certainly, some members of the gay community are going to be offended by the title of this chronicle, but it has a very real urban basis to it, and Weberman didn’t coin the term, nor is he claiming to have. If even a fraction of what he and the Yippie Museum research team have uncovered is true, the term fits, especially looking at the smoke coming from Giuliani’s father, his own official behaviors as a prosecutor and Mayor of NYC, and his other questionable associations. 

In short, he seems to fit most of the definitions of an urban “homothug”:

5. homo thug

A male thug who has [a] sexual interest in both males and females. Lives an ag[g]ressive lifestyle ( a well known result of hood life), mentally unstable (most of the time) and can claim to be of heter[o]sexual orientation (or not); mainta[n]ing a reputation that can be associated with the life of urban minority men (aka thugs) in and around predominantly black neighborhoods (unless they are a celebrity). All the while attempting to remain the alpha male in people's perception of him, therefore having to sustain the life of a straight male, with only or mainly heter[o]sexual intents to be accepted into society without consid[e]ration.

"Tyshawn" is your typical average thug. He's flippin' weight in the hood, got a clique with niggas that don't give Shit about much. On the block all night, having sexual leasions with chicks and even has a 4 year old son. Nigga dresses fly, got a fly ride and is known by people who otherwise would more likely than not, be associated with a homo Thug. Tyshawn has a relationship with a pre-op tran[s]sexual("Tania") who passes quite well and looks and maintains herself better than a lot of females. She herself is also "notorious" in the hood (for her own reasons). "Tyshawn" and "Tania" have a sexual relationship period[i]cally but consistent. And all the while these sexual rendezvous occur[r]ing on the DL [MJ—“on the down low.”] with no knowledge of his actions amongst his family or his crew. [iii]

Giuliani’s social interactions have been described by former NYC Mayor Ed Koch in his contemporary columns as being like “Frankenstein’s” monster. Koch was hardly alone in his use of this word in describing Giuliani’s governing practices, this one coming from Former Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller:

"Frankenstein's monster was a misunderstood character [that] reached out to people and frightened them and they ran away. I don't think the mayor has made that much of an effort. He just kind of frightens them away without reaching them at all."

Miller, a former television newsman, said, "When a police department becomes politicized because it's being run by a shadow police commissioner who is the mayor, you have to question as to whether the department is acting based on what is right and what is lawful or whether the department has become a political arm."[iv]

Did they even know the half of it? Maybe…and maybe not.

Interestingly, the author spends the first one hundred pages of his profile of Giuliani by focusing on his lifelong relationship with Alan Placa and the former Monsignor’s very curious background and tendency to protect pedophile priests. According to Weberman and several sources, were it not for the statute of limitations (and very conscious legal motions by him in several other cases so that it would expire), Alan Placa would be a convicted pedophile. Looking at his sources, he makes more than a good case for it. Worse still, Placa might have been involved in negligence with a victim of a pedophile priest, perhaps leading them into a situation where their suicide was all-but-inevitable. The overall picture of Placa is not only bad, and if even a smidgen of it is true, he’s a dangerous criminal degenerate and a threat to the community no matter where he lives. 

So why hasn’t he run for public office yet?

As a matter of fact, it appears that Alan Placa’s pedophilia is very real and the author cites Suffolk County grand jury proceedings as well as his own interviews with one of the alleged victims of Placa, one Richard Tollner, to support the contention. Tollner’s accounts of molestation jibe with other parts of the public record in so many areas that one has to assume the only reason the former Monsignor is still walking around a free man is because he has friends in high places, such as Giuliani and the Church itself. The main problem for Tollner—and other victims of Placa and his network of pedophiles—has been the statute of limitations, which Placa used as a lawyer (a role he hid from the victims and their families, not to mention the authorities on many occasions).

Yet, Giuliani has been zealous and consistent in defending his lifelong friend, often referring to him as an asset to the community. Is Placa blackmailing him? It’s a good question, and we should remember that there’s no honor among thieves and criminals, generally. It’s even money that Placa got a lot of practice in this area of dodging the law through his little game of protecting himself and other pedophile priests and clerics from accountability. Yet, Giuliani calls him a “friend.” Sometimes, “friends-for-life” takes on a different meaning, a dark one.

Consorting with know criminals and the corrupt, ruling with brutality and an iron fist, and ignoring the law while claiming to uphold it was all part and parcel of “Giuliani time.” To truly know someone, you must judge them by their actions, not merely by what they say. Weberman’s approach to Giuliani is that it’s all about character, a perspective that he shares about the troubled mayor with former NYC mayor Ed Koch, and he’s right in doing it. The man’s background and the people he surrounds himself with suggest that Rudolph Giuliani is a criminal, if not an unimaginably compromised individual, and that he is a fool who’s simply useful to the establishment and the criminal underworld. It’s hard to say what’s worse.

When held against the authoritarian mayoral record of the Giuliani years, the author’s text comes off like a very professional police dossier and will likely become a part of the permanent historical record regardless of the tactics unleashed to suppress it. It is thoroughly researched, indexed, and footnoted, and the author draws on the public record while adding primary sources of his own from interviews with various players in the narrative, like the inimitable FBI informant and City Hall “fixer”, Larry Ray. In other words, Homothug isn’t just some second hand retelling, but a part of the primary record. It’s a chronicling, if you will, of what genuine corruption looks like, how it behaves, and it wisely delves into where it comes from. The sad truth is that it comes from social injustice, that gift that keeps on giving. 

There’s a genuine yearning on Weberman’s part to try to understand why Giuliani and the people he’s surrounded himself with over the years are such irredeemable scumbags, and that’s being charitable referring to them as such here or anywhere. True, there are pointed and personal jibes in the text, but they are well-earned ones considering the targets involved. 

Many of Giuliani’s lieutenants were and are—in fact—career criminals with mafia connections and a skill for gaming the system, even on Wall Street. As Weberman notes, Giuliani himself grew up in an organized crime milieu, and his own father was a low–level mafia soldier as well as a general sociopath. But to Rudolph Giuliani, acute moral degeneracy appears to be that credential for being one of his “wiseguys,” making it a reminder to all that our political system is based on mutual blackmailing, more often than not. That’s not just an epitaph for New York City and Giuliani; it’s one for a very troubled American polity trying to find its way back to the light, and a flimsy sentimentalism isn’t going to fix things.

Perhaps former Mayor Dinkins was “soft on crime,” and there are good arguments for it (according to Weberman and others, Giuliani is “soft” in other areas these days after prostate surgery). But: was Giuliani a better alternative? It depends on who you are. If you’re part of the economic establishment, sadistic lower-level police officers, corrupt cronies, and organized crime, “Giuliani time” was a trip back to Eden and the joys of crony machine politics. Rudy had all their backs, but he didn’t have the backs of the people of New York City. 

Having run one of the most worst presidential campaigns in American history in 2008 wasn’t the only thing that sank his monomaniacal ambitions: It was the intuition of the American public that not only was Giuliani an uninspiring demagogue who used the events of September 11, 2001 to his political advantage, but that he was also corrupt, thanks-in-part to the scandals surrounding people who were close to him. The most familiar name would be Bernard Kerik, when the corruption-ridden Bush II administration chose him to head the Department of Homeland Security. As Weberman makes clear, Kerik was just the tip of the iceberg in the life of a very pathetic, deluded, and crazed individual who should have never held public office.

Homothug will be part of the epitaph of a very sick and deluded individual who should have never held public office. Therefore, it’s also an epitaph for the times he came up in.

---

[i] Shapiro, Edward S. (2006). Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot. Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, University Press of New England. xi.

[ii] Weberman, A.J. (2008). Homothug: The Secret Life of Rudy Giuliani. New York City: The Yippie Museum Press/BookSurge Press. 83.

[iii] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=homo+thug

[iv] http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/1995/07/27/1995-07-27_mayor__frankenstein___ex-cop.html. Marzulli, John and Sheridan, Dick. “MAYOR ‘FRANKENSTEIN’ EX-COP BIG CALLS RUDY CONTROL FREAK,” New York Daily News, July 27, 1995.

"It's a coup!": Some more reflections on the Wall Street bailout reactions

"When small men begin to cast big shadows,
it means that the sun is about to set."
--Lin Yutang

WWW--It was coming from Michael Moore, Naomi Wolf, and from all-points-in-between on the political spectrum back at the end of this last September and October: the bailout of Wall Street was a coup because "we're all being robbed," case closed. That we're all being robbed is a certainty, but a coup? I still keep hearing this weird contention, yet I'm not seeing any proof that any of the players being bailed-out are different ones.

Why should we care if it's the same people? Because that's one of the main preconditions of a coup--someone else has to be in-charge, replacing the last group. What coup? It doesn't fit the definition, yet you have progressives and conservatives screaming one has occurred all over the place. Was there one? Well, yes, ages ago, and they missed it. They're making strange sounds over this, and I wanted to know why, and I've given it a lot of thought and reached a few tentative conclusions.

My belief: people like Michael Moore have had major investments on Wall Street like many of us have had (not me, however!), and that includes folks like Arianna Huffington, Al Franken, much of the wider society, and maybe even a few investigative journalists and media-outlet owners out there. But aren't they begging the question? That was my feeling back in September, and it still is, with a few more historical reflections.

Now, if you lost your ass on Wall Street and you heard that others were being bailed-out--and you weren't--wouldn't you be freaking-out and yelling too? Sure you would, and if you had a soapbox bigger than everyone else's, you'd use it, right? Perhaps. This shouting that the first bailout of the banks was a "coup" by some of these celebrities across the political spectrum reminded me of someone from our past: Father Charles E. Coughlin, the radio priest.

Today, most Americans have no idea who Coughlin was, but you could say that he was one-part Rush Limbaugh, one-part Michael Moore, and one-part Joseph Goebbels. Yes, this is about the 1930s and the Great Depression, what else would it be about? Coughlin was originally from Ontario, Canada and had confronted a group of the KKK who had tried to burn his church in an act of anti-Catholic hate, so he began with "progressive" and populist credentials. At the dawn of the Great Depression, Coughlin sounded like a voice of reason to many, and they supported him with money and activism. He went as far as founding a short-lived political party, the NUSJ (The National Union for Social Justice), and was most popular with Irish-Catholics during the 1930s, but had a much wider appeal.

Incredibly, he and Gerald L.K. Smith (a lieutenant of Huey Long) could be fairly credited with creating the white supremacist movement. How did it end up that way? From frustrated populist aspirations and a deep disdain for Western-style capitalism. Some people react dysfunctionally to social injustice because they're terminal racists. Where did it all begin for the "radio priest"?

Father Coughlin's American parish in Royal Oak, Michigan began doing radio broadcasts of his sermons sometime in 1926 out of Detroit's radio station WJR, the beginning of the radio age. It has been calculated that Coughlin had a listenership-peak of as many as 40 million, an incredible number for its time. Coughlin was radically populist one moment in his speeches, backing Roosevelt completely one day, and then making remarks totally against the New Deal the next depending on which way the political winds were blowing at the moment. For him--as with Limbaugh--it was all about ratings. In this respect, little has changed since the 1930s, but he accidentally pushed FDR further to the left, so he had some value.

While Coughlin was railing against Wall Street, he was heavily invested in it at a time when almost nobody in the general population was. Who had money then? Demagogues like Charles Coughlin, that's who; the radio priest was getting rich slamming Wall Street, from his appeals for donations, and his weekly radio program's advertising revenue. Unbeknownst to most Americans, by the mid-1930s, Father Coughlin was one of the largest holders of silver in America. In other words, he was a hypocrite in most respects, and vanity assured his fall. Coughlin began with very enthusiastic support of FDR's New Deal programs, but by 1934 he started having political aspirations of his own and began bitterly attacking Roosevelt and his policies. He also began broadcasting and writing anti-Semitic remarks and began his love affair with Continental fascism and the Nazi State.

By 1938, he reprinted the Tsarist secret police (Okhrana) forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in his own newsletter, "Social Justice," and was witnessed at a Bronx speaking- engagement doing the fascist salute. It was all downhill after that, as radio stations stopped carrying his programs and the Roosevelt administration moved on him to curb his ability to disseminate first his radio programs, then his newspaper and related literature through the postal system. By 1942, with his support of Nazism all-but-complete, Coughlin became a marginalized laughingstock, and went back to his tiny Royal Oak parish to live out the rest of his life in relative obscurity.

Interstingly, he had connections with a domestic fascist group called the "Christian Front," who plotted to overthrow the government of the United States. He never renounced his connection to them.

I don't think Michael Moore is exactly the same kind of creature as Coughlin, and this isn't some attempt to smear him with the same brush at all, because it's not accurate or fair. But there are a lot of parallels between his life and that of Coughlin, and he's not alone. New communications media have empowered many individuals in the last two decades like never before, and with that access comes the same kinds of issues that arose during the 1930s, a time when radio was first emerging as a force. But the cries of "coup" smack of similar hypocrisies that people like Coughlin once engaged in. One might ask such celebrities like Limbaugh and Moore (or even "conspiracy" writers/activists like Alex Jones) what their holdings on Wall Street are today. You might get a very surprising answer indeed, even with the contemporary prevalence of investment.

Now is definitely a time of demagogues, but the question is: "Who are they exactly? Who are the demagogues?" Rush Limbaugh and most of the right-wing noise machine certainly fit that bill, but there are others out there, right now, waiting for their time. Intellectual honesty is as good an inoculation as you're likely to get, a proactive solution for the ages.

Rush Limbaugh is: Anthony Zerbe, Omega Man's "Mathius"

CPAC--If you don't have to shave your knuckles (or wear gloves on them since you drag them when you "walk"), you know that the Republican Party has no solution to the current economic crisis and that they're now going to have to settle for White Supremacists, market extremists, the intellectually challenged, and worse, for their political base.

But enough about America's ruling class and trailer trash: This was a self-inflicted wound, like all the rest.

With no real leadership or vision within their party, they're degenerating--it's hard to believe they could fall lower, I know--but they are. The best indicator of their imminent collapse? Rush Limbaugh's ascendency as leader of the GOP. When you have a nationally syndicated conservative radio commentater running your party, and when you have a scab plumber advising you on your national strategy as a party, you're basically fucked, you have no future staying the same and acting the same. Their solution? The aforementioned.

Logically, this can only be a good thing for Americans and the world, but the GOP are still going to be a big problem that has to be taken care of, and they're being very open about their intentions to derail the process again. Luckily, this is a self-correcting process--voters will continue to rebel and leave the Republican Party in-droves as it becomes clearer that they have no vision for the future and no solutions to problems that are largely their own creation. They will continue to lose seats in Congress without actually changing with the times.

That they won't change, and that they're making the same mistakes that they did in the 1930s makes them the world's largest Civil War reenactment outside of punk rock, that other Shibboleth of the right. This means that--once again--truth is out the window for them, it's messy and inconvenient, so out it goes from the chamber pot.

Do we give them what they want? Of course not, that's why we're in the current economic crisis, an ongoing constitutional crisis (the reason investigations and convictions are necessary), and two worthless wars. If President Obama doesn't address these and many other problems forcefully and directly, we may never recover as a nation. Does the GOP really want to own the fact that they created an economic crisis, then made it terminal? Apparently, the answer is a positive one: "YES!" Isn't it nice to say "yes"? In the backdrop, behind the curtain, Rush Limbaugh keeps declaiming that he's "not the leader" of the Republican Party.

Yet, from watching even just a sliver of the coverage from CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference, begun during the Watergate hearings), it's clear that Limbaugh really is the de facto leader of the Republican Party, not that one guy...uh, what's his name? Black guy. Anyone? Right, Michael Steele. Why wouldn't Rahm Emanuel (aka "Dutch Schultz") want to go to the trouble in pointing out the obvious last week? Like the Bolsheviks, Limbaugh saw a power vacuum and he's exploiting it, even abusing it in publicly flexing that power and forcing the de jure leader of the GOP into recanting his criticisms? That Steele recanted today is just underscoring the obvious.

A few Limbaugh highlights from CPAC that aren't getting much attention:

..."I learned that Fox, God love them, is televising this speech on the Fox News Channel, which means, ladies and gentleman, this is my first ever address to the nation. [Applause] Now, I have someone in back taking phone numbers. In fact, I would like to introduce to you my security chief, a man who runs all of my security. His name is Joseph Stalin. Joseph, would you please --

[Laughter ] I am safe from any liberal attack, in public, because they would be afraid of offending Stalin. [Laughter]..."

And: ..."But don't make the mistake at the same time of feeling liberated as thinking we're better and we can do better as a minority. Because we're not a minority. And if you start thinking of yourselves as a minority, you're going to be defensive. And you'll allow the majority to set the agenda and the premise and you're responding to it. The American people may not all vote the way we wish them to, but more Americans than you now live their lives as conservatives in one degree or another. And they are waiting for leadership. We need conservative leadership. We can take this country back. All we need is to nominate the right candidate. It's no more complicated than that. [Applause]"...

And, very tellingly:

..."There are certain realities. We don't have the votes in Capitol Hill to stop what's going to happen. What we can do is slow it down, procedure, parliamentary procedures, slow it down and do the best we can to inform the American people of what's really on the horizon. I know it's going to be tough. At some points, I don't think it can happen even right now."...

And, ..."So what is so strange about being honest to say that I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? Why would I want that to succeed? [Applause]"...

And, thankfully, there is no economic crisis, the Democrats are lying that there is one, and the GOP had nothing to do with it at all, so move on: "

..."President Obama is so busy trying to foment and create anger in a created atmosphere of crisis, he is so busy fueling the emotions of class envy that he's forgotten it's not his money that he's spending. [Applause]"...

As you can tell, there were a lot of "crowd pleasers" (jokes for the humor-impaired) in there for what's becoming a smaller and smaller voting base for the Republican Party. Limbaugh's comments aren't going to go anywhere in making that base any larger, and his exhortations for congressional GOP incumbents (for now) to slow down the process has extraordinary risks, especially when that obstructionism is found to be an incontrovertible truth as to why the crisis has deepened. That's enough to kill any political party, fragmenting it in a constellation of third parties, if not a new and singular one.

And up on that stage, speaking at the very end of the CPAC sing-along ("Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport!"), Limbaugh just looked and sounded weirder than he ever has. It's not just that he's totally out-of-step with reality or how the history of ideas and their rejection or acceptance works (see Fukuyama piece below), it's that he's disconnected from the very idea of causality itself. Hey, don't go changin', it has the rest of us elated at the prospects.

No, what CPAC and Limbaugh all appear to be are the mutants from the Omega Man, suggesting pathetically and nihilistically that, "There is no solution!!" just as actor Anthony Zerbe tells Charleton Heston towards the end of the story, another permutation of Richard Matheson's apocalyptic story, "I Am Legend." Conversely--conversely?!--the words coming from Limbaugh's mouth could almost have been voiced at CBGB's in 1976, or any number of heroin "shooting-galleries" over the last 75 years. That's the GOP: so punk you can taste it, and the taste is as bad as you imagined it would be. According to them, it's capitalism or death for the human species, just reminding us that they have their cause and effect mixed-up again.

Obama Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel releases more Bush II administration war on terror documents

Washington D.C.--You wanted change? You're getting it, today. This is a switch--even for the incoming administration: the release of more key Justice Department legal documents from the immediate aftermath of the events of September 11th, 2001, and they're eye-openers.

The Obama Justice Department has made available a series of key legal memos crafted byt eh Bush II administration that cover the power of the office of president to declare war, "Congressional Authority over Captured Enemy Combatants," the legality of torture, "Interpreting FISA and its Applicability to Presidential Authority," "Presidential Authority to Suspend Treaties" (curiously, ABM ones in one case), " 'National Self-Defense' as a Justification for Warrantless Searches," and so on.

The Obama Justice Department has made their stance on these questionable legal opinions of the Bush II Justice Department crystal clear:

For all the foregoing reasons, the propositions highlighted in the nine opinions identified above do not reflect the current views of the Office of Legal Counsel and should not be treated as authoritative for any purpose. A number of the opinions that contained these propositions have been withdrawn or superseded and do not constitute precedents of this Office; caution should be exercised before relying in other respects on the remaining opinions.

We have advised the Attorney General, the Counsel to the President, the Legal Adviser to the National Security Council, the Principal Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and appropriate offices in the Department of Justice of these conclusions. ("Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda," DOJ.gov, 0303.2009)

Here's what this writer finds most interesting: the opinions by the OLC were made just five days before the Obama administration came into office on January 20, 2009! In short, these decisions were likely being withheld from release by the outgoing Bush II administration and this week's release indicates the decisions were all but predetermined by the incoming administration for potential release. In other words, the Bush II administration was doing some back-peddling in their legal assertions at the tail-end.

That it took a little over a month for the Obama administration's Attorney General to releases them is a very tangible change considering these memos were suppressed by the Bush II administration for years. Say what you want--that it's "not enough," that it's "belated" (for whom?), and that we "won't be seeing much more of this," but it doesn't matter. It's real, and it happened, and more is coming. So far, it doesn't appear that the Obama administration have ruled on the findings of the OLC, but it's likely that they will concur with them in their own decisions.

Maybe it's just a start, but it's one of the best starts we've seen in at least three decades (if not more), and it's happening almost overnight. Patience has its own rewards, but keep demanding more of this, don't ask, and do tell.

"Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda," DOJ.gov, 0303.2009:

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/documents/olc-memos.htm

Obama Justice Department ends raids on medical marijuana facilities

Washington D.C.--There's a new sheriff in town. Once again, we're seeing valid and significant change that we would never have seen under a Republican president and/or a Congress dominated by them. As Attorney General Eric Holder stated yesterday, it's "now policy."

For those who are cynical about the incoming administration (only in office now a little over a month, a bit premature and telling of the cynics), this is good news and a real change as well as a move away from wasteful government spending for law enforcement programs that do more harm to our society than good.

Marijuana drug pigs had their "last hurrah" at the end of January before the Obama administration could do anything to stop it, just three days after the new president's inauguration. Thirteen states have now legalized the licensing of production, distribution, and use of medical marijuana. It's not going to stop there, and the ranks of the police are turning against past drug interdiction policies.

The last two states to recently legalize medical marijuana were Michigan and Massachusetts in November of last year during the national and state elections. In Massachusetts, the police union initially lobbied against the legislation but have been coming around to the new reality. Nobody said change was easy to adjust to, but they're doing it in Massachusetts right now, and in several other states.

As part of Drug War policy, appointed "Drug Czars" who run the ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy) are supposed to lie--yes lie--about the properties, medical uses and beneficial or benign attributes of marijuana. From Section 704 of the Reauthorization Act of 1998:

...[The Director of Drug Control Policy] ...(11) may serve as spokesperson of the Administration on drug issues; (12) shall ensure that no Federal funds appropriated to the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall be expended for any study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812) and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that-- (A) is listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812); and
(B) has not been approved for use for medical purposes by the Food and Drug Administration;...

Incredibly, federal drug control agents and officials can even use government funds to meddle in local and state elections to effect the outcomes of any marijuana legalisation proposition up for vote during elections, a clear violation of the Hatch Act, but we don't need no stinkin' badges anyway.

Remember that this was passed under a Republican controlled Congress at the time back in their salad days of 1998. The Clinton administration did little to oppose it, but they were trying to save themselves over a lie told under oath about a blowjob, it being a national priority and obsession of the GOP at the time. If you don't like the government meddling in your lives, and you want a government that does less of it in general, hitting rightist and reactionary advocates of these drug policies is a good place to start. The time is ripe since they're losing on all fronts.

Sitting on our laurels isn't going to be a smart move for anti-prohibition forces and the point will be to keep pushing (back) until significant victory and precedent are achieved. All this aside, this is a state's rights issue, period. The incoming Obama administration supports this contention and the legitimacy of medical marijuana for those with terminal illnesses who need it desperately, and this isn't even mentioning all the green uses (including the production of needed biomass, food, and energy) from the cannabis plant. The Drug War is the finest and most obvious example of wasteful spending outside of the F-22 fighter and the failed "Star Wars" program, but in America, if it's broken, don't fix it.

But it really is a state rights issue. This is where I agree with Libertarians...but that's about it, and I'm hardly alone. For those who want to live in a police state, I advise relocation to Colombia or Russia, their authoritarian digs should be to your tastes. Our drug laws were originally crafted to legally harass people of color--Blacks and Hispanics in-particular. The support was bipartisan, but as is their wont, and when there are rights to be rolled back, the Republican Party tends to be leading the charge.

It's fitting that when we finally got a president of color, the walls began to fall regarding drug prohibition, ultimately race and class-based laws primarily for the purpose of arbitrary antidemocratic social control. Just over 75 years ago, the walls came down with alcohol prohibition in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis and sustained calls for its end. We live in similar times and in a much less "racialist" culture. There are other problems to address. Bluntly-put, we need the revenue. It's time to legalize and regulate (including taxation) of all psychoactive drugs, and a time to move towards treatment and away from the militarization of our police departments.

Cops Against Prohibition:

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

The Reauthorization Act of 1998:

http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/about/98reauthorization.html

AG Holder's statement yesterday in a Q&A:

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-15821